Blog Post

Before I begin my homily, let us hear the prayer “For our Country,” in the Book of Common Prayer. Written by the Rector of St. Michael’s Church, Bristol, a good two centuries ago, it seems wonderfully to the point. Let us pray: Almighty God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage: We humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of the favor and glad to do thy will. Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogancy, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in thy Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to thy law, we show forth thy praise among the peoples of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness; and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail; all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Lessons: Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15; 2:23-24. St. Mark 5:21-43

In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.

In our first reading from the OT apocrypha Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, we get a clear exposition of the subject of death. God did not intend for us to die in the beginning. Death came because of the Fall of the Human Race; i.e., our willful separation from our Creator and Sustainer, originated in our primal parents and spread through time and space to all their children. That separation is called sin, and its wages are death, because, after all we have cut ourselves off from the source of life. Death is a permanent defining feature of our life “East of Eden.” Death will not be overcome until the full Redemption of God’s creation comes to fruition in the End through the triumph of the Son. In the meantime, “Sister Death,” to use Saint Francis’s name, is a blessing. A blessing? Yes. It means we don’t have to live forever in a state of separation from God – which is the definition of Hell. So Sister Death is a severe mercy, you might say a Mercy Killing!

Jesus, God’s Son and Word made flesh, hated death. As he approached the tomb of Lazarus, He not only wept; the Greek says he snorted in disgust and anger. He raised Lazarus from death, as he did a widow’s son and in today’s Gospel, the Synagogue Ruler Jairus’s twelve year old daughter. Today’s Gospel of Mark tells the fullest account, while Matthew and Luke provide shortened versions.

On the way to the synagogue ruler’s house, Jesus, surrounded by a crowd, feels “virtue” go out of him at the touch of a woman with a 12-year-old malady. He stops and asks who it is; she comes forward, feeling in herself the healing, and Jesus blesses her, telling her that her faith – the means through which his virtue (his strength and wholeness and power) conveyed itself to her – her faith has made her whole. [By the way, Luke, the Beloved Physician, has removed Mark’s disparaging phrase about the woman’s bad experiences with doctors!]

So on Jesus goes to the house where the little girl lies dead. “She is only sleeping,” says the Lord, who is laughed to scorn by the onlookers. [“Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep,” said Jesus, “but I go to wake him up.” Jesus has given death a name, “sleep,” from which he will wake us at the Great Getting Up Day of the Resurrection! But today, as with Lazarus, we get a sign of what is to come.]

Only the parents and the three closest apostles – Peter, James and John – are allowed into the dead girl’s chamber. The Lord takes her by the hand and we have his very words, Talitha cumi, “Damsel, Little Girl, I say unto thee, Arise!”

Peter never forgot those words. And he used them himself after Jesus’s death and resurrection. He changed one letter. There was an old woman disciple, Tabitha, who died. Peter was called to her house, where he said, Tabitha cumi, “Tabitha, arise!” And so she did.

What do we have here in all this? Several wonderful things:

We have the effectiveness even of faith by instinct and touching – by which the Lord’s virtue infuses our infirmity, as in the case of the woman with the chronic issue of blood.

We have Intercessory Prayer and Witness. The love and trembling faith of the Mr and Mrs Jairus, together with Peter, James and John, stood by as the Lord moved within that setting of faith.

And we have a sign of the future life everlasting. The little girl will grow up and grow old and will die again. Lazarus will too – in fact we know that the High Priest’s Council (at least a gang within it) planned to kill Lazarus as well as Jesus – because Lazarus’s presence was an embarrassment to them.

But what are all these miracles? The little girl, the widow’s son and Lazarus, and for that matter the woman with the issue of blood, were BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE BY JESUS. BUT THERE IS A GREATER LIFE AND MIRACLE STILL, THAT OF CHRIST’S RESURRECTION. “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him!” The Redeemed Creation has broken in, and Christ in his Resurrection is the “first fruits of them that slept.” What happened to Jesus shall happen to us. These miracles are signs of the Resurrection and Redemption that is coming our way, that we confess in the Creed, and is as sure as the fact that we are here together now — And what is it that we doing here?

We are celebrating the Holy Mysteries of Christ’s Body and Blood. And what do we hear as we receive the Sacrament? “The Body/Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given/shed for thee, PRESERVE THY BODY AND SOUL UNTO EVERLASTING LIFE…” The eucharist is, like these miracles, a sign, put right into our bodies, of what is coming our way. If death is the poison of destruction spoken of by old Solomon, the eucharist is the medicine of immortality from the hand of Jesus.

In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.